Old and Wishful
by Demyrie
Summary: Damas doesn't know Jak. He doesn't intend to. But as a suicide mission wreaks dire consequences on the newcomer, he orders Jak to be put directly into his care, as to oversee his recovery himself. Why? He doesn't quite know. Challenge, SPOILERS.


A/N: A piece done for a challenge posted by Wolfy-chan and stuff. Kinda cute. Kinda wangsty.

Damas needs more love anyways. AND I SERVED IT.

Ohoh. (stupid AN, iknoez, stfu.)

**SPOILERTASTIC JAK3 THINGS, KTHX. Kinda. Just… don't read!**

-.-.-.-

Old and Wishful

-.-.-.-

The room was an oasis.

Water tinkled, and the winds rattled restlessly outside- it was something of a roughly hewn birdcage, held loftily above a city of burnt orange. A world apart, hedged in by long glass plates and red stone.

"I apologize for this, Jak."

Worn brown hands flipped open a sac of milky yellow salve, dipping a gob out and rubbing it steadily onto his patient's arm. The muscled, bloodied appendage soon shone with pink-streaked grease, and the hands retreated for another putrid-smelling lump.

"Our caretakers are overwhelmed with the newly injured, and our supplies are thinly spread as it is. But you needn't worry- survival has mandated a firm hand in these essentials. I can treat you well enough, until our specialists have a moment for you."

In reality, the cool, sandy alcove tucked away for use of the sick still had a few starved cots left, ones that Jak or any other warrior was fully entitled to.

But the pure fact that Jak had come to _him_ first, forcing himself up off his knees in a strange, mechanical lurch- something driven by instinct rather than progressive thought- and stumbling across the throne room like a wild-eyed beast, bleeding from every pore… led the King to believe he deserved better. That day had held no end of unpleasant surprises for the expedition he'd sent out, and Jak's position as leader seemed to have damned him with the worst of it.

Afterwards, Kleiver found the boy's car half-driven into a sand dune outside. There was a good chance the reckless driver had a concussion, but he still managed to utter Damas's name before passing out in a boneless heap, blood cracking his bare back open like the dark furrows in water-starved earth.

It wasn't simply outward injuries, either. It wasn't long before he began cramping and spasming- dehydration wound his every muscle into a tenacious paralysis, creeping up into his handsome face. Every moment of care was greeted by wide blue eyes and the boy's wet, blood coated teeth, gleaming from a ghastly grin. He seemed to creak from his fetal position, muted groans wandering out.

They spent several hours force-feeding him water, until Damas insisted that the boy be taken up to his chambers for further recovery. No other place would do.

Almost instinctively, Damas rejected the idea of his new warrior- the strange one with the talkative rodent, and the eyes like his wife's- lying prone in a cot with his caretaker's attention juggled between so many suffering men. If it was one thing a warrior detested, it was inaction after action- lying vulnerable at the will of ones he knew were beneath him in strength. It was a good deal egotistic, true, but also an urge of survival. The giant hates to fall, and fears above all the inability to get up once more.

Damas had faith in his medical house. And yes, there were others who could help Jak just as easily as himself. But somehow, he felt this was his place.

They sat by the waterside, Damas kneeling behind his patient. The boy stirred under his firm touch, ill at ease with a warm body at his back. Still nervous.

"It's fine." Jak winced even as he said it, stiff cut lip sliding back from his third chipped tooth of the month. He stretched his jaw, methodically. "I've got no room to complain- this is more than I ever got in Haven. People there wouldn't touch me."

Damas stilled slightly, jaw setting as he gave a short nod.

"They feared you."

"If you didn't have a use for me, wouldn't you do the same?"

It was not meant as a challenge to the King's mettle. Jak's tone was defeated, but never imploring. The man was far too proud to implore.

There was something distinctly solitary about this newcomer. Save for his gibbering orange rat, which seemed some sort of childhood pet, and possibly Sig, he would converse with no one. The odd men out were the only ones to gain his attention and affection- Damas quickly found himself becoming at least familiar with the young man, for all the trouble he caused in the city. The arena conflict still stung, and the King was not one to forgive easily.

Still, for all the ruckus, perhaps… fond was the word. Yes, he was fond of the young man.

"You are a skilled warrior." Damas said grimly, wiping away the salve to another stiff-lipped breath of air from Jak. "It leads me to wonder who taught you such things."

But of course, the foremost teacher in any young man's life was his father.

-.-.-

_They were out in the buggy enclosure, the wind hissing and spitting outside- tossing up waves of yellow sand against the metal plated door, egging the city on and snarling for victims. He pinned Jak with a searching glare, expression darkening in warning._

"_You have a reputation for being rash. Didn't your father ever tell you to pick your battles wisely?"_

_Jak simply turned away, body language expressing a concise discomfort that no words could serve. His strong hands kneaded the side of his newly won buggy, and even the rat had gone silent._

"_I didn't know my father."_

-.-.-

Damas halted, brown fingers stilling in another viscous smear of salve.

"You mentioned before, your… father-" He began gruffly.

Jak shook his head, as though expecting it.

"I didn't know my father." It was a canned, succinct answer, parroting that of before. Prepared, but still raw- as though he were the only one to ever venture to ask such a question.

Who was this young man that such a question would never arise?

"Distracted, or commonly absent?" Damas asked, holding out the blonde's arm to get at his raw elbow- at the shift, salve swelled from the deeper cuts lacing his forearms.

Jak frowned deeply and calmly, as though absent from his abused body and the dark skinned man's methodical attentions.

"Neither. I just… grew up without him." He drifted into a considering silence, the musical patter of water stirring his thoughts. "I had my Uncle, though."

It sounded like a menial excuse that he himself did not believe. Damas quirked a fleshy brow, feeling vaguely severed from the blonde's reactions by only facing the back of him.

"Where did you grow up?" He asked after a moment.

Jak did not answer, lip tucking under his teeth. Sandover was an imagination away, and several hundred years. Would it be too much to explain? It seemed so, most especially to a man whose trust he was straining to gain- fantastical stories would only alienate a realistic, hardened man like Damas. He was not sure of the story himself, besides.

The wind howled through the slits in the gleaming windows, winding up to an ear-piercing shriek. Seeming to sense Jak's reluctance, Damas led the conversation to level ground again, speaking with a mild, professional ease.

"I only ask as you have a curious mix of traits," he explained. "You retain the disagreeable attitude of most Haven cast-outs, yet you have amended your faults far more readily than half of them. You are useful."

"Thank you." Jak smiled wryly, before tacking on a gruff, "I think."

Even as he realized a step had gone awry, Damas wondered at his lack of discomfort- this was a soldier. A warrior, fully fit and appreciated in his service, but a warrior nonetheless. Damas made no 'royal' distinction between himself and his men, as they were all of like minds, but to have a prolonged conversation with one… was nearly as foreign.

Neither the need nor the opportunity had ever arisen. The art of conversation was not one well prized in Spargus either, as communication was forged physically. His days as a political figurehead were over. While he had been proficient at word-weaving at one time, now it was… awkward, at a stretch.

His mouth thinned, contemplating the quiet arrangement of them on the floor, and the wet, full rattling of the waterwheels. Jak's ears pricked as the king took a deep breath and began wiping off the worst of the gore frozen in thick, black rivulets down his back.

"You seem at home here. Much more than other men." Damas ventured gruffly. "It must have been a relief to you, coming to Spargus."

"It was." Jak said honestly, voice soft.

Damas stretched back, a hidden bloom of approval surging for the boy as he picked up a stack of cloth- sand-torn scraps that were no longer fit to be used as clothing- and unraveled it at his side. There was something in that simple sentence, coming from this simple young man, that made him perhaps prouder of his city than any long-reigning Wastelander's approval. The same words would not be held in reverence if offered by Sig, for instance.

Though inexplicable, he appreciated Jak's honesty and found an instinctual empathy in it.

"Understood." The king murmured, voice becoming gravelly and uncertain as he suddenly broached a wall previously tucked away. Haven. "I never felt at home in that city, even as it was mine to rule."

He rubbed vigorously at Jak's back, scraping the last coat of yellow sand off of the youth's congealing wounds. Jak's jaw tightened, but made no sound of pain.

Stiffly maintaining that inherent need to prove himself to this man.

"Things've gone downhill since you left, Damas." He breathed out, voice thick with the evidence of sand shrapnel lodged in all the various cuts, a bright crystalline orange with blood.

"That is a subject I would not touch with a ten-foot palm." Damas said resolutely, and somewhat awkwardly.

Jak grinned suddenly, ears pricking again as a hollow slop of water filling a bucket came from behind him. The water was then poured down his burning back in one weighty splash, pattering all over the king's knees, and followed by determinedly gentle fingers in the deep of his wounds. Jak's jaw clenched, stomach tightening compulsively.

He could feel the gelatinous gore press in around the king's touch, and felt vaguely embarrassed for his own state- and most importantly for putting the king through medical duty when he had a city to run.

"It is still in one piece?" Damas ventured after a moment, voice gruff. "Praxis has not yet let it fall to the Metalheads?"

"It's still there." Jak admitted, not mentioning the fetid state of the King's city. While half-destroyed and housing a thriving Metalhead population, they had not yet been over-whelmed. He straightened his back, which gave a hollow snap, and tried to ignore the stinging peppering his skin.

"Sig can tell you."

"I will ask him." Damas muttered, somewhat moodily. His fingers whispered against the sandpaper-like scraps as he laid them across the worst of Jak's wounds, making a dull, contemplative sound as one slipped, curling at his booted feet like a thick ribbon of fat.

But Jak's mind had taken to wandering, almost soothed by the sounds of steady-handed care issuing from behind him. It was pleasant, just being cared for. It was something he'd never experienced before. Even Daxter wouldn't touch him when he was bleeding this badly. But there were still questions.

Would Sig know about the current state of the city? He definitely seemed to know everything else while he was there. That was his job- to spy. To know.

But a lot of things had changed- and there was something Sig had said. Some conversation while coming back from the nest…

-.-.-

He had ridden easily in the seat, like he'd learned to do- Daxter rode up top, tucked away from the blistering wind. The occasional squeak of him contently spiffing up Sig's peacemaker (which he had begged for minutes to even touch) poked its metaphorical head in every so often, even through the roiling sands and huge, chugging wheels of the buggy.

But a sense of unease filled the open-air car, and Jak soon turned to his friend with a thin frown.

"_What's Damas got to do with Haven City, Sig?"_

"_None of your business." He said tersely, jerking the wheel to take a turn at full speed. Jak frown deepened- Sig had never turned away a question so roughly._

_Daxter piped up at the obvious rebuttal, poking his head around the buggy's frame while his long ears flapped in the wind._

"_What was all that spying you did, huh?" He shot at the Wastelander, tone wheedling._

_Sig relented, as though knowing a question from Daxter was far more dangerous- as he wouldn't stop until he'd gotten an answer. He shifted in the driver's seat as they mowed along the yellow terrain, sand-worn leather croaking hesitantly._

"_Let's just say Damas lost a little something in the city, and he wanted me to find it." He simplified, eyes set straight ahead. Then he'd turned to Jak, giving one of those gleaming, false grins._

_  
" What do you care, man? Haven folk are a bunch of weaklings... you know that!"_

-.-.-

Jak frowned.

Keeping Sig in Haven even after he was exiled? If it was just to gather information, Jak couldn't see the reason- Damas had made it clear he had no intentions of reclaiming Haven, almost preferring Spargus. What was it that he wanted so badly that could still be in the city?

Jak could only think of one thing that Damas had mentioned a few times. And while they were on the subject… turnabout was fair play.

"What about your family?" Jak asked lightly, steeling himself for any outright refusal on the King's part. But his only rebuttal was another shift of bandages, and Damas mutely encouraged him to lift his arms, feeding a thick scrap of cloth across his chest. Unopposed, Jak stumbled on.

"I never see them here. When you were… thrown out, did you…?"

He bit his lip, blanking on the words that fit.

Did you lose them in Haven, he thought? Were they murdered by Praxis's men as you left, to give you no reason to continue? No reason to take back what they wanted so badly, but you never really wanted in the first place? His mind tumbled, conflicted.

Saying anything of the sort would mean a bitter end to this much-needed scene- whatever manner of scene it was- and Jak could not bring himself to do it. He wasn't even sure he wanted to inquire after it any longer. But Damas' expectant, austere silence prodded him to a halting murmur.

"You mentioned a… a son."

The King's hands stilled on his back.

"…My son." He repeated, voice achingly empty.

Jak imagined those intense violet eyes paling into a tired memory, and immediately felt something vital drop from his gut.

"My son was… taken." Damas said tensely after a moment.

'Lost' was a word he had not allowed himself in a long time. Lost implied guilt he could not abide- not with all he had gone without for so long. At Jak's respectful silence, Damas straightened and invested himself once more in wrapping the blonde's back.

"My son, Mar. He was stolen from me at the moment I was betrayed by Praxis- we were on our way to another council building to discuss a rising threat in the city, and it came to us in person." He murmured, measured and succinct, tugging gently to tighten Jak's bandages. "Praxis had assembled a new task force without my knowledge, and they seized us both, separating me from him."

With a speed that unnerved him, Jak suddenly assembled a nightmarish scene. A younger, stronger Damas strode down the street with a faceless little boy at his side- three of his steps to each of his fathers and a growing sense of fear. The atmosphere was tense. Haven pressed in, dark and angular- a threat.

Damas took a wider street, aiming for the raised roads and hurrying his boy along with a whispered word, who merely obeyed where others might have complained or questioned. But a few more streets and their journey was cut off- their only warning was the grisly snap of static, and suddenly the two were surrounded by primitive, blocky Krimzon Guards, all leering restlessly. Their shoulders were blank, presenting a nameless threat.

Warily, Damas questioned them- who were they, what business had they in Haven? Who sent them? But they made no move to answer, instead keeping their shifting silence, and there came a thick crack as one bludgeoned the king brutally over the head.

Everything beyond that was panic.

Damas was sprawled on the filthy street, blood trickling over his white hair as civilians turned to run, screaming, and the king's thick hand finally slipped from his boy's small pink fingers as they seized the kid around the middle, heaving him screaming down the street. Jak's skin chilled as his mind revealed the end: the final, pained shudder of the King's body as his eyes slipped shut, and he saw the last he ever would of his child.

He would wake up in the desert, alone.

Jak swallowed, closing his eyes.

"How old was he?" He asked, subdued.

"Four years and three months." Damas supplied instantly, never slowing in his care of the young man. Never having to recall or stall.

An attentive, loving father.

But now, he did not know how old Mar was. He could not. How long had it been?

Jak realized he was touching his pant-leg- his thumb worrying restlessly over a cool, smooth object in his pocket. He could have lost it in the last mission Damas sent him on- but he kept it with him regardless. He always kept it with him. The seal was a part of him now, whatever it had meant to his younger self.

Damas was quiet. A bit too quiet- in that firm, finalizing way that hailed a quickly closing door.

He could fast feel their confidence slipping away, the sting of Damas' deeply treasured wounds overriding the need to share. Perhaps the sense of who he was talking to had finally sunk in- Jak had no soothing words of condolence to hand him, so why bother?

But strangely, he needed this.

Jak carefully added another card to his teetering pile, pushing just the slightest bit more.

"How long ago did he…?"

"Years." Damas answered.

Another silence was smoothly inserted into their communication, Jak's mouth twisting as he reached another dead end. His fingers went back to worrying over his pocket. A few good minutes more dragged on with the occasional rustle of cloth, deep male breaths and the trickle of water.

"You remind me of him, Jak." Damas admitted suddenly, voice low and halting as he tied a bandage. "The way I hope… he would've grown up."

The honest words left Jak feeling sharply helpless, forcing him into silence until the King had drawn another raspy breath.

"Something in you speaks of him- past your audacious Haven attitude, of course."

Jak's face lit in a weak smile- one almost unnervingly mirrored in the hardened man behind him. The King's dry face wrinkled in dull content.

But there was an admission in his tone that caused the hair on Jak's neck to stir. A flat, injured resignation.

"Surely you don't think he's-" Jak said weakly

"There is no room for hope." Damas hardened immediately, eyes slipping out of focus. "Even building this city was a far cry from probable, but I still take my faith in the possible. To hope for anything beyond that is pure pain. I have pressed my luck with fate enough as it is."

"You might still find him."

"He is lost."

The sentiment had never been spoken before, but it was as shielded and cold as though it had always sat in the back of his mind.

"Haven is a big place." Jak insisted, voice gruff. "Sig thought he found something, you could send him back-"

"Jak, this is not your concern." Damas hissed, bitterness gnawing into his voice. "Sig is one of our best men in this world- you have him to thank for your life, and mine to thank for his. Turn around and rethink yourself."

He turned around to look at Damas, who now had a definite note of angry panic rutting in his violet eyes.

"I could look for him." Jak offered, voice tight.

"Out of the question." Damas countered tersely. He was losing patience.

"Damas-"

"Enough, Jak, ENOUGH." Damas seized the youth's shoulders and turned him back around with a controlling jerk. Jak winced, tensing in anticipation of the King's agitated hands, but the touch never came. A significant, tense lack of contact hovered, Jak waiting for some solution.

Instead there came a dull scrape of metal. A crinkle of dry cloth, and Damas loomed over Jak, careworn mouth thin and angry.

"You think too much for my sake. And in vain!" He rasped, fist clenching at his side, anger surging from his tan, blocky form. "To do this is to open an old wound! We suffer enough in this battle, we do not need to destroy ourselves from the inside!"

Jak had pulled himself around by now, gazing up open-mouthed into the King's imposing form. Damas' anger and sharp words had drained the young man of human response. Jak stumbled, trying to dig something like an excuse from his blank, panicked mind.

"I didn-"

"Silence, Jak." He hissed, instantly. "You strike with the worst of weapons. I believe in equal respect for men of all standings, but if there is one thing I condemn it is the will to harm your own leader- by any means! Any further and you would have reached the unforgivable."

A savage glow lit his worn face, a burning line of sight fixed on the blond's wide blue eyes until some unspoken charge – the expelling and forcible absorption of a limitless grief- had passed between them. Damas seemed coldly satisfied after a moment, and his fierceness faded, slow and tortured akin to the creak of leather.

"Do not ever broach this subject again with me, Jak." He ordered flatly, voice an impassioned whisper. "If it was one thing beyond my city and my people and my wife that I cannot stand to think of losing once more, if only in memory, it is my son."

He turned and walked away over the stones of the throne room, throwing back stiffly:

"I can help you no more. Go to the medical overhang- they will finish your treatment there."

No slam of a door was needed. The simple fading of his footsteps was jarring enough. It was so final that Jak looked after him for several moments, lingering where the man had disappeared into the depths of his stone palace, before pressing his face into his hands and expelling a shivering breath of air.

Dully conscious of his condition, he was soon on his feet and in the creaking old elevator, heading toward the medical overhang.

-.-.-.-

Hours later, Jak was still very much like Damas had left him, crouching in his cot with his head in his hands. The threadbare piece of bed was as thin and brittle as a cracker, but felt nice enough to someone accustomed to the floor. It was night already, heavy and cold even in the shadow of the cliff.

The overhang was crowded, just like Damas said, and he seemed to be the only one awake. Sleeping men meant a chorus of thick breaths all around him, and Daxter wasn't there- he never could sleep right when Daxter wasn't nearby- but that wasn't everything. Jak felt strangely distant from it all, still lingering on his time with Damas. Alone in his misery, seemingly, until a different sound swelled up and faded.

An old, tired breath.

"You look far too much like him to even attempt impersonal sympathy, Jak. I know your intentions. But for my sake, cease."

Jak looked up, eyes wide and dry. Damas, King of Spargus, was standing in the doorway- a muscled centerpiece above a sea of bulky, sleeping men.

He stood straight, but without any real drive or power. His eyes were soft. Upon closer inspection, one would find the king's hands shaking against the doorway he himself had hewn so many years ago. Old and pale where the calluses had built up as testaments to years of abuse, bulging at the knuckles.

He shook his head, as if marveling at himself.

"I apologize for earlier." He whispered. "It was… unpleasant."

Jak made to speak, made to whisper back fiercely that pain was nothing to be apologized for, but Damas gave him a warning look through the gloom.

"Silence, Jak." He said- but it had nothing of the poison of earlier. Jak felt himself relaxing, and Damas paused, faintly amused at the following silence. When he finally spoke, it was almost delicate. Slow and careful.

"It is odd. I came here to say one thing, and one thing alone, and still I find myself hesitant. Perhaps you will think me old and wishful, but I spoke honestly. You do remind me of him, Jak."

Jak's heartbeat rose.

"Damas." The name was a breath, one infinitely charged with everything from apology to honest, painful want. A want to be included as he never had been. A want to accept any burden this man placed upon him, anything to ease a certain pain- a pain that was present in both of them.

Damas smiled as if faintly absent from it all, focusing on Jak with tired eyes.

"You are my own wound, true, but one I would not relinquish for all of Spargus." He paused, a proud smile nudging at his mouth as he looked the young man full in the eyes. "You did well today, Jak. If a father I ever was, I am proud to call you my own as a warrior… and perhaps as some manner of son."

A sharp, raw happiness swallowed Jak's ability to speak, even as he groped for words- anything to express what a gift that simple sentiment had been. But Damas had already turned away, raising his hand in a wave, and with a few steps had left him in the darkness more whole than he had ever been.

"Sleep well."

Jak smiled.


End file.
